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A breath away's not far to where you are.
-Richard Marx/Linda Thompson.
Fish and chips for tea again. And if he inhales, even a bit, he'll smell them. He feels sick. And he wishes he couldn't breathe.
He wishes he couldn't breathe.
*
Sometimes it's like his fists become this channel for those breaths he doesn't want to take.
He can hear him in his head. He hears too much. Noises sharp in a way that twists him up, like vinegar washed against his tongue, words pickled before they ever meet the air.
He doesn't want to like them. He wants his body to know better than his mind when it comes to Victoria, to Holly, to anyone who will take him away from those intakes of breath he gets sometimes when he looks at Adam and others like him. The ones he never gets with girls.
And then there's that bar and that guy giving him his card. And all too soon Paddy breathing down his neck. Saying it.
It comes out in his hands, punches stealing breaths from him, taken, like he wishes they could take away everything he feels. Everything that's wrong.
I'll never be one of them.
And he wishes he couldn't breathe.
*
He thinks that's the easiest way.
Just stop breathing.
He gets inside the car. Takes a breath. The calmest he's taken in months. That's the key. Turn it on. Just stop.
Quick.
Just quick. Let it wash over him and it'll all be over. All of it.
He needs it to be over.
Because too many people will know. Too many. What he is. What he wishes he wasn't.
Isn't.
He won't be. He won't be like that. So he hopes it'll all end here. He closes his eyes.
All too soon he opens them again. And this time it's a ventilator taking those empty breaths for him.
And he wishes he couldn't breathe.
*
He learns how to say it with stuttered breaths and tears tangled in his throat.
He still gets so angry sometimes. Does stupid things.
Clyde.
His fault. And his fault for caring.
I don't want to imagine a world without you.
Jackson breathes his last right in front of him.
He's nineteen years old and one of the very few people he's ever let himself care about is gone. Jackson is the one he learned how to care for and how to be cared for with.
Gone.
The first guy he ever...ever.
Jackson will never be twenty-two. But he'll always be Aaron's first.
He knows it was his own choice. He knows it's what he wanted. But he still blames himself.
And he wishes he couldn't breathe.
*
His guilt becomes scars against his skin. Anger spilled outside and in.
*
'D'accord,' he knows.
D'accord.
He doesn't hesitate doing what he can for Adam. And he thinks that maybe things with Ed will be okay.
And for a while they are.
Okay is living. Living means breathing. One day to the next. It's okay.
D'accord.
*
He's not okay.
Because of him.
Robert Sugden.
He's just a dickhead with a fancy car. A closeted dickhead at that.
And he wants to kiss him so much he can't breathe with it.
He can't breathe.
He can't stop.
*
Fish and chips again.
It's in the shuddering breaths he takes before he has to shatter his Mum's world and tell her what that bastard Gordon did to him.
The oxygen feels like it twists up inside his airway, pushed up against the tears and words that won't stop coming, until those breaths and truths are pulled from him like splinters. So many small remnants, left for so long, to throb beneath the surface of his skin.
Take them out. Take them all out.
But it hurts. Each and every time. Every single one. A sharp intake of breath.
And he wishes he couldn't breathe.
*
Robert is there.
Robert has been there.
Robert is here.
Robert is shouting at him about wanting to marry him.
Marry him.
Robert wants to marry him. Aaron Dingle.
Robert loves him.
Robert won't leave him here.
The water closes in around his face.
And for the first time in so long he truly wishes he could breathe.
He wishes he could breathe.
*
Sometimes those leftover splinters find their way to the surface again. Those buried deep.
And removing them is harder still.
Hurts.
Them and those near him when the pain blinds him to the truth.
Liv, Robert, his Mum.
He has to leave them. His own fault. Again.
Stupid. He made a stupid mistake.
Sharp breaths. Splinters.
He's going back inside.
And he's twisted up, and afraid, and full of words he still finds hard to say.
But he puts that ring on Robert's finger, and he has one of his own.
Married.
He'll hold on to drawing him close during the dance. Breathing him in. All the hours that follow.
That kiss goodbye.
He'll hold on.
And he'll try to remember how to breathe.
*
Nothing exists in that cell.
Blood and bruises he can take. Even when he begins to feel less than nothing.
Just a cell. Just a cell.
And the one inside his own head is the worst of all.
Bye then, Mr Dingle.
It's a whispered memory.
But Gordon's voice is louder. Too close.
Breathing isn't a priority anymore.
Surviving is.
*
Home.
The lack of air scratches at his throat, curled claws that rattle at his ribcage, shaking where his heart tries to beat steady.
His fist meets Robert's face in fear. His husband's skin made ruin beneath his fingertips.
But he breathes him in, he breathes him in.
His breath catches on a laugh (he can laugh), over smoked salmon and fuck me now eyes. He missed him so much. He missed them.
And he loves. And he breathes.
*
She took away his breathing space. Took it.
Just took it.
*
The slices on his skin become just another way to take a breath.
Worn out skin. Scarred up lungs.
Anything to stop this suffocating feeling that makes it feel like his life is slipping away from him.
He thinks the hardest breath he'll ever take is in the moment before he takes his ring off in front of Robert.
I do love you. I'll always love you.
Bare fingers meet the air. He hands back his ring. This little piece of metal that was like oxygen on his skin.
Keeping him alive. Keeping them alive.
Robert doesn't speak.
And Aaron tries to find the air again.
*
He's watching the love of his life slip away.
Robert! Robert please, you can't die, you can't.
Watching as the life drains out of him.
And he wishes he would breathe.
Just breathe, Robert. Breathe.
*
Pocket dial.
That's what he says.
But really everything is in the breath just before those words.
All those months of healing. In that single breath that speaks.
Of visits to his counsellor and nights he spends alone.
Of learning how to breathe out and not turn the pain back in.
Of a man he doesn't want. And a kiss he almost took.
A breath he wants to take.
*
He can feel it.
That breath is there waiting to be drawn in once more.
He wants to breathe again.
He wants to breathe, breathe in deep.
With love soaked lungs.
*